Which will be better?

[alvino]

I personally think PS3 is going to win. It has the best hardware and so best ideas willl probably come to it (better physics capability, etc, because of the CELL) haven't seen much of Xbox 2 though I was dissapointed at teh Need For Speed clips...

This is my response to about the PS3 supposedly being more "powerful". This was from one of the Gallery Threads in the General Hardware and Software section.

sorry to say buddy, but ps3 is gonna rape little xbox 360

(p.s. ... u can have dual HDTV with ps3 and free for online play as usual)

Haha, the RSX's mere lead by 50mhz in speed doesn't do shit for it. THe RSX is like a normal PC GPU, and is inefficient. The 360's Xenos chip, however is more flexible for developers to utilize the Unified Shader Architecture (which allows them to allocate how many pipelines or vertex shaders is needed at that moment). The Xenos chip has 48 ALU pipelines, which can be used as pixel or vertex shaders. It's the Unified Shader Architecture's job to assign which pipeline to be a pixel or vertex shader when it needs to, resulting in maximum efficiency without loss of performance. The Xenos chip and the CPU both share the consoles' 512mb of GDDR3 RAM @ 700mhz with a memory bandwidth of 22.4GB/sec for the GPU and 21.6GB/sec for the CPU, which is somewhat slow compared to modern PC's, which have about 37GB/sec of memory bandwidth. In order to make up for that lack of speed, ATI added 10mb of embedded DRAM in the GPU (which connects with the system at an insane speed of 256GB/sec) to act as a buffer for graphically intense situations that need lots of RAM and fast. The RSX however, uses "Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines", which means that developers have to tell the GPU where to allocate it's resources, instead of having the system allocate it where it's best used.

The Cell Processor is a incredible piece of technology, but it's way overhyped. It's architecture limits it's capabilities when used in games.

The Cell
1x PowerPC-based Core @ 3.2GHz
1x VMX vector unit per core (since the Cell ony has one general computing CPU core, there is only one VMX vector unit)
512KB L2 cache
7 x SPE @ 3.2GHz (these SPE cores are NOT for general-computing, they specialize in floating point work)
7 x 256KB SRAM for SPE (basically the "Cache" for the SPE cores)

The 360's CPU
3x PowerPC Cores @ 3.2ghz each
1x VMX-128 vector unit per core (because the 360's CPU has 3x general-computing cores, it means that the CPU has 3x VMX-128 vector units)
1 MB L2 cache
Two hardware threads per core; six hardware threads total (The 360's CPU uses SMT or Simultaneous Multi-Threading, which is similar to Intel's HyperThreading)

Game code usually uses 80% general-computing and 20% floating-point. Since the Cell has 7 SPE cores which specialize in floating-point work, it excels at that area. However, because the 360's CPU has 3x general-computing cores and 3x vector units (compared to the Cell's 1x general-computing core and 1x vector unit) it gives the 360 the advantage when it comes to games. The Cell is a really nice chip, but the design of it's architecture is unsuitable for gaming, and because of that, it hampers the Cell's performance.

Ok, the PS3 has Dual-Outputs. So? How many people are going to buy, much less afford 2 High-Definition TVs (which are still expensive)? 1 or 2% of the market? Psh. What a waste of resources, money and time.

Just to let you know, Xbox Live Silver is free with Xbox 360 (all you need is a Broadband connection). To be honest, I'd rather pay for Xbox Live than get Sony's P.O.S excuse of an Online Gaming service for free. What Sony does is impress everyone with the PS3's specs on paper (not how it works and the architecture) in order to cover up the fact that they haven't come up with anything to compete with Xbox Live. Speed or the number of cores doesn't matter...it's how you design the chip's architecture to suit your needs. The Cell Processor is very nice (and powerful), but it's ill suited for gaming.

 

[Kalgatha]

i don't think that the performance of the systems are gonna be that different... i mean yah...there might be slight differances and one might have better capabilities of gaming ... but hey... you will have to have an HD tv to get full benifets of the graphics and even then i doubt if you will get the full ...just better...then the system is what plays the games...the games themselves will have to take full advantage of the system...which i doubt will happen...these are both good systems...but it goes back to what mr. monger said ... its not the system its the games....well...anyway...im pretty sure nintendo is outta this one

 

[alvino]

This time, both Microsoft and Sony are head to head because they both have a LOT of games coming out for their consoles. Another 360 advantage is it's multimedia features, you can connect to your Media Center PC or your normal PC and transfer files etc. You can even connect your PSP to transfer files!

 

[mr.monger]

the reason xbox was better than ps2 is because ps2 came out 1st. xbox had time to improve and all that. the hardware was better when xbox came out. it will be different this time because xbox will come out b4 ps3

 

[alvino]

So? PS2 became more popular because it came out first and got more games, developers etc. This time is different...both Sony and Microsoft have TONS of contracts with developers and TONS of games in the works. The point is that the Xbox is a proven competitor, and they've already decided on the chip architectures for the PS3 anyways, so any sudden changes would add more money to Sony's bill, which results in a even more expensive console (look forward to about $350-$400 or more) that can compare to the 360. Nintendo is the one company who needs to get their heads out of their asses...the Revolution is like the unknown. Anywho, you can't compare to which will be better because of their release dates. The PS2 is still popular because tons of people thought it was the best at that time. Until Xbox came out, that is

 

[Kage]

Yeah thats true, the PS2 and Xbox have had the best games around (xbox did pick up a bit in popularity)...the Gamecube to me never did (and I bought one..)

The news about the Cell chip dampering games performance is interesting, though take it this way, it still has many cores to work with, just like the X-box 2 does.
I'm also sure it won't be like a PC playing games, because take note that the games will be made especially for the system and so all the parts that might nto be so good can be worked upon in the programming of the game (pc developers wouldn't care about this since they are for a wide range of different systems), and so this will also make the performance running the games on the different CPU's almost unnoticable. Get what I mean?

So even though some of the hardware is as good as PC now, (some is better than what we have), we'll stil l get better performance in the consoles, and also better graphics in games, because like I said before, its built especially for that GPU as well, and not for many like with a PC.

 

[alvino]

The news about the Cell chip dampering games performance is interesting, though take it this way, it still has many cores to work with, just like the X-box 2 does.
I'm also sure it won't be like a PC playing games, because take note that the games will be made especially for the system and so all the parts that might nto be so good can be worked upon in the programming of the game (pc developers wouldn't care about this since they are for a wide range of different systems), and so this will also make the performance running the games on the different CPU's almost unnoticable. Get what I mean?

More cores does not always mean that it will be better. Developers might have a even harder time trying to write game code that utilizes all of the Cell's cores. Even Microsoft says that writing game code is already pretty difficult to utilize all of the 360 cores, then what about the Cell?